Friday, October 16, 2015

Mir Muhammad Taqi Mir (Urdu: مِیر تقی مِیرؔ‎, 1723-1810), whose takhallus is, simply, Mir - was the leading Urdu poet of the 18th century, a pioneer who gave shape to the Urdu language. One of the principal poets of the Delhi School of the Urdu ghazal, Mir migrated to the court of Awadh in 1782 and lived there till his death. Mir-ji is one of the foremost names in Urdu poetry, oft remembered as Khudā-e sukhan (God of words.)

Here, the Shahenshah of Ghazals renders Mir:

Dekh to dil ke jaan se uthta hai
yeh dhuan sa kahaan se uthta hai

Look, if it comes from my heart, or life?
Say, from where does this smoke rise?

Gor kis dil-jale ki hai yeh falak
shola eik subh-o-yahan se uthta hai

Tomb for some cinder-heart must be the sky
A burning thing every morn thence, too, does rise.

Yun uthhe aah us gali se hum
jaisey koi jahaan se uthta hai

Thus I got up, alas, to leave behind that lane
Like to part this world some soul might rise.

Baithne kon de hai phir usko
jo tere aastaan se uthta hai

Who can make him again a proper place to sit
He who from a seat at thy house did last rise?

Ishq ek Mir bhaari patthar hai
kab ye tujh na-tawaan se uthta hai

Love, O Mir, is such a heavy stone
When could a fool like you even make it rise?

Wednesday, August 19, 2015

Faiz was being transferred between jails in a tonga (a horse carriage, the common man's transport of the time), and it so happened that the tonga passed a market-square where he'd been fêted not too long ago. Nayyara Noor sings the nazm that he penned upon reaching his cell at the end of the ride. It ought to be an anthem of women in the Islamic world. For that matter, why only women? And why only the Islamic world?

Friday, August 14, 2015

The Mughal emperor Akbar gave a name to the doab between the Beas and the Ravi - he combined the names of the two rivers to call it the Bari. The tehsil of Dipalpur, a stronghold of the Bhatti Rajput clan, lies in the Bari. It was here that the first Mongol invasion of India was deflected by Balban in 1285 (at the cost of the life of his son.)

The most noticeable feature inside old Dipalpur town is the monastery of Lal Jas Raj Dipal, venerated by locals. According to legend, Lal Jas Raj was the son of Raja Dipa Chand, the founder of Dipalpur. The boy had a lock of hair on the back of his head, while the rest of his head was shaved, a common practice for the Hindu devout. One day, while he was teasing his step-mother, she got annoyed and told him to go bury himself. The curse took hold, Dipal's body started entering the earth. When his step-mother saw what was happening, she quickly ran to his rescue but by then he had almost completely disappeared, with only his choti (lock of hair) above ground. Eventually the choti turned to stone, and the spot where Dipal had sunk became a shrine, testament to the destructive effect of cruel words on those we love.

This area at the Punjab-Rajasthan border has been the holy ground of many peoples' saints. Hazrat Bahawal Haq (Bahawal Sher Qalandar) came from Baghdad and settled outside Dipalpur. Guru Nanak lived here for a while. When Akbar visited along with his son Saleem (the future emperor Jahangir) in 1578, it was to pay homage to Hazrat Farid Ganj Shakar.

Below, Amir Ali Khan, Saleem Ali Khan, Ejaz Ali Khan and party render traditional qawwali inside the old town of Dipalpur - an act of defiance by the Shia, for the Shahi Masjid of Dipalpur flies the banner of Maulana Fazul ur Rehman, the well-known Islamist politician from Khyber Pakhtunkhwa, head of the Jamiat Ulema-e-Islam. The Maulana and his men follow the Deobandi school of thought and look down upon song as un-Islamic.

The qalam is that of Bulleh Shah, the raga is Des.

There is no longer a canonical channel of these lyrics, which have spread across the doab like the braids of the Beas, here is an approximate translation of another version (performed by the Wadali brothers here.)

Charkha mera rang rangeela, ban gai teri yaad vaseela.

My charkha (spinning wheel) of many colors, has become a way of meeting Thy memories.

E mahiya tere vekhan nu, chuk charkha gali de vich panwa.

Beloved, to catch a glimpse of Thee, I place my charkha in the lane outside.

Ve loka paane main kat di, tang teriya yaad de panwa.

People think I spin cotton, but I truly weave the thread of Thy memory.

Charkhe di oo kar de ole, yaad teri da tumba bole.

I tire, set charka aside in shade, the music of Thy memory still rings in my heart.

Ve nimma nimma geet ched ke, tang kath di hullare panwa.

Humming slowly, slowly, I spin gently and dwell on the joy of meeting Thee.

Monday, May 4, 2015

Mix-and-match is becoming ludicrous. Farid Ayaz just passed off "Padharo mharo des" as a Sufi spiritual. Erm, a little background, then you, gentle reader, be the judge.

The tribes of Rajasthan have long exported mercenaries. These foreign legions of the desert have buttressed the ranks of kings of alluvia, and their women have been stranded in the Thar waiting for men who may never return. In the eyes of these women, the saffron/ochre of desert-turban (kesar/kasumal respectively) mix metaphorically with the mane (kesar) of the Gir lion to label the lost lover "kesaria". May he return safe to my arms. Saffron/maned lover, return to my lands - kesaria balam, padharo mharo des.

Kabir also asks us to come to his land - chalo hamaro des. But where is Kabir’s country? It is a different, more elusive country, one that you inhabit when you understand how to live in the knowledge that you will too die:

Clay calls out to Potter, What of thee mauling me
The day'll come soon by, Mauling thee I will be.

Here are Farid Ayaz and Abu Mohammed:

Narwar is a historic town in Madhya Pradesh in central India, roughly between Gwalior and Jhansi, east of a steep scarp of the Vindhya range where the Sind River turns sharply to the south. Classically Nalapura, the town is said to have been the capital of Raja Nala, a character in Hindu mythology who princess Damayanti of Vidarbha Kingdom chooses for husband, who loses everything to gambling, and wins it all back - a popular story told in the Mahabharata.

Dhola, son of the king of Narwar and successor to the kingdom of Nala, is wed to Maruvani, daughter of Pingal, chief of Jhangal (Bikaner), as a child: the bride is 1 1/2, the groom 3. After the formalities, Dhola returns to Narwar with this family, and soon forgets what all those lights and flutes and sweetmeats had been all about.

As a young man, Dhola is married off again, to another princess, this one named Malvani. When they hear of the second marriage, the parents of his first bride, Maruvani, send messages to Narwar asking that the lawful first daughter-in-law be fetched to her husband, but thanks to Dhola's forgetfulness and Malvani's scheming, that is never allowed to happen. There is probably an element of an alliance having lost strategic value.

So Maruvani takes matters in her own hand. She composes music in Raag Maaru - the desert raga of the Thar, and sets couplets to the music. She trains a minstrel in the couplets and sends him off to Narwar.

The night when the bard reaches the outskirts of Narwar palace is a stormy one with lightning and thunder obscuring his approach. The singer creeps up to palace walls and starts in Raag Malhar; when the preamble reaches Dhola's ears at the palace window, over air laden with static, he stands electrified, listening. Raag Malhar gives way to drizzles, the downpour subsides, the thirsty earth soaks up water and in the pungent aftermath the singer shifts to the couplets in Raag Maaru:

At the mention of Pingal Dhola starts, he remembers his first bride of long ago. The singer sings out the rest of the composition, Maruvani's musical letter to her husband, that she waits for him still.

In the desert of Thar hide jewels three
First Dhola (chivalry), Second Maruvani (fidelity), Third the color Ochre (of blood and sacrifice)

Chagrined, Dhola sets off for Bikaner on his fastest black camel. Pingal's court bursts out in celebration when he eventually reaches. After a few days in Maruvani's palace, the couple set off to return to Narwar. Several adventures ensue. Maruvani is bitten by a snake but resuscitated by Hara-Parvati. Umra-Sumra the highwayman lays a trap for the couple in the form of a traveling musicians' mehfil, but Umra-Sumra's wife, who is from the court of Pingal, tips the would-be-victims off and Maruvani escapes with Dhola. And so on.

Return to my land, come to my land, do
Saffron lover, come back to my land.

Dhola-Maru is one of the most popular love stories of Rajasthan. Probably dating from the 8th century, it is still remembered by couples in love, and women of Thar will still address a beloved as Dhola.

Sunday, May 3, 2015

Here's a Punabi qawwali composed by Badar Ali Saheb Ansari. Nusrat Fateh Ali Khan had recorded Badar Ali's qalam many years ago, here's a fresh take from Mukhtiyar Ali Mirasi - a folk singer from Bikaner.

Mukhtiyar Ali was born in a small village named Pugal near the Indo-Pak border (where the music-video below is shot), and belongs to the semi-nomadic community of Mirasis, who have been the traditional carriers of the oral tradition of the Sufiana qalam in India. The Mirasi are a Hindu, Muslim or Sikh caste found in Northern India; they are the genealogists for a number of communities in Northern India. Within the name Mirasi are a number of groups, each with its own history and its own myth. Some Mirasi groups are thought to be Muslim converts from the Hindu Dom caste, while others claim to have belonged to the Hindu Charan/bard community, said to have converted to Islam at the hands of Amir Khusrau. The word Mirasi is derived from the Arabic word miras, which means inheritance, or heritage. As hereditary genealogists, the Mirasi maintain pedigrees of their patrons and are often involved in the negotiation of marriages; they sometime style themselves as Nassab khawan, or the keepers of family trees. They are also known Pakhawaji from the pakhawaj - pakshavadya or two-sided Indian drum - that they play.

Saturday, April 18, 2015

'Baulanga' means the Baul Corpus in Bengali; these traditional songs, lyrics braiding one to the other, do not admit to easy demarcation of authorship.

The singer Parvati Baul tells us that the composer is an unknown Muslim fakir from Bangladesh, who describes the last few moments of Radha’s life, just before she walks into the dark waters of Yamuna river, mistaking it to be the Dark One, her beloved Krishna.

Saturday, January 31, 2015

A fellow down on his luck, having heard of the munificence of Hazrat Nizamuddin, came in from an outlying village to the khanaqah in Delhi to seek alms. The saint had nothing to give him, so he gave away his slippers.

The mendicant was disappointed, and eventually left. On the way back, he took night's shelter in a caravanserai where, as chance would have it, Amir Khusrau had halted on his way back from a lucrative foray, trading jewels with Bengal. Khusrau recognized his master's footwear, and, after the briefest of enquiries ("I smell the fragrance of my lord"), ransomed the item for all he had made from his trading expedition. "You got them back cheap, then" - was Nizamuddin Auliya's laconic comment when he had his slippers returned.